Spring Break Teen Tragedy: How Safe Are Your Children?

April 5, 2010— -- The 17-year-old high school offensive lineman who was heading to play for Notre Dame next year was intoxicated and "pretty belligerent" prior to falling to his death from a hotel balcony, deputy police chief Major David Humphreys said today, raising questions about spring break safety.

Matt James was a standout high school football player from Cincinnati who fell from a fifth-floor hotel balcony in Panama City, Fla.

"The people in the room next to him were trying to help calm him down from a state of belligerence. He leaned over the balcony rail and in just a matter of seconds as he was leaning over to shake his finger at these people and talk to them he just went over the side," Humphreys said.

Humphreys could not comment on how intoxicated James was until the autopsy report is released, but said "according to the witnesses, many of them his friends, he was to the point where he was pretty belligerent and broke some things in the hotel room just prior to the fall."

No one in the group has been "forthcoming" with how the teens got the alcohol, Humphreys said.

"Certainly if someone was to provide a minor with alcohol, obviously it leading to a tragic event like this, [pressing charges] is certainly a possibility," Humphreys said.

James was with a group of about 40 young people and six parents, according to The Associated Press.

At the time of James' death the exact location of each chaperone is unknown, Humphreys said, but several were at the hotel but not in the room with James.

ABC News was unable to contact any of the chaperones in James' group.

James' accident was the fourth balcony fall this year in the Panama City Beach area and the second fatality.

Brandon Kohler, 19, from Winder, Ga., died when he plunged from a different hotel balcony on March 24. Alcohol was also involved in that accident, according to Kohler's friends.